Greetings, this is the 2nd time I write the meta report for Team Rankstar! (Here’s the 1st one I made for here if anyone is curious), we’ll see what Shadowlog has stored around this time! With the mini-expansion casting it’s shadow upon us (and with Blood probably still being super underwhelming in Rotation even after it, seriously, what’s the deal with that legendary card??), this time there seem to be…quite some weird developments in the meta, or in the very least just in the japanese section, ‘cuz you know, Shadowlog, not helping matters that the records are getting lower and lower with each week making it difficult to analyze anything correctly, but anyways let’s stop wasting time and see what the data says to us. Also I’m gonna include GameWith’s decklists this time, I know they may not be the most reliable, but they’ll do.

RUNECRAFT

Dethroning Shadow as the most used craft this time, we find Rune in the very top of the pyramid, not content with just making Rotation miserable with it’s spellboost shenanigans. It currently has a 20.7% use rate and a 48.7% winrate.

4th most popular deck with a 45.6%(45.5%/45.8%) winrate, DShift continues (again, again, again and again) to struggle against the meta despite it’s immense popularity, but funnily enough having a good matchup against Midrange Shadow going 2nd, it being 54.4% to be exact.

Still being at 5th place in popularity, Dirt Rune sports a 54.5%(57.6%/51.3%), it still has the “best Rune deck” title hold by the neck without any apparent intention of ever letting it off. It now shows off what it should have since the beginning in Shadowlog: having a positive winrate against Mid Shadow when going 1st, 50.3%(52.9%/47.1%) to be exact, it also has pretty good matchups against various meta decks, most specifically Vengeance Blood with a 54.7%(51.5%/59.2%) and DShift with a 60.2%(58.7%/61.5%), but still losing to being even against Roach with 45.7%(50.8%/40.9%) and crying it’s heart’s content when pitted against heal heavy decks.

9th most popular deck and being the same old same old, having an advantage against most decks because they mull against Shift instead of Daria and throwing the opponent off when they suddenly flood their board with their 0 cost followers on turn 4/5, and now having a positive winrate of 53.1%(53.3%/52.9%), while it goes even to slightly unfavorable against most decks unless it highrolls, it’s especially potent against Roach with a consistent 60% winrate against it going both 1st and 2nd.

SHADOWCRAFT

Now it’s not the most popular class funnily enough, people may be getting bored with it’s playstyle I guess, with a 17.8% use rate and a way more reasonable 51.7% winrate, Shadow continues to have good results, but in such a Rune heavy meta it may start to struggle a bit.

Did you seriously thought that there was gonna be another deck more popular at the moment? HAH. Mid Shadow still continues to be the most common deck and currently has a 53.8%(54.8%/52.8%) winrate nowadays a small amount of people have started to include both Mordecai and Ferry in their lists as an alternate win condition (with mixed results),it still goes even to positive against most decks, with the exception of Dirt, Tenko with 29.9%(25.7%/33.3%) and Mid Sword with 47.2%(48%/46.4%).

FORESTCRAFT

Forest continues to climb it’s way in the popularity ratings, now beating Blood (fittingly enough) and being the 3rd most popular craft with a 16.6% use rate and a 52% win rate. It also brought a suprise this time around too.

Completely solidified as the 3rd most popular deck with a 52.8%(56.9%/48.9%) winrate, the deck continues to be relatively the same, but some people include Godhunter Selwyn in their lists, since it’s a Sylvan Justice that doesn’t clog your hand, the deck continues having the trend of having good matchups against both Vengeance and decks that go slower than it/don’t run many wards and folding over Mid Shadow and Daria.

Aggro Forest is back! and now according to GameWith it’s a tier 2 deck, and Ipiria has been completely faced out in favor of running the full playset of Fairy Drivers and some Beetle Warriors, also Ancient Elf is now a good addition for the deck since it can act as pseudo bounces for Roach, it also shows a pretty decent winrate of 51.3%(59%/44.2%), however it doesn’t have any MU record that surpasses even 30, so it’s a bit hard to evaluate it’s matchups.

PTP Forest is back! For those uninitiated, this deck is one of the most viable ways of activating Path to Purgatory, using the fairy tokens and Altered Fate to generates shadows quickly and softening up the opponent with Roach. GameWith classifies the deck as Tier 3, and Shadowlog reports it as having a 51.8%(57.4%/46.5%) winrate, but despite this, and like Aggro Forest, it’s MU records are too low to properly form an opinion.

BLOODCRAFT

Taking a bit of a hit to it’s popularity and now being 15.3% of the meta, Blood still hold it’s ground with a 52.4% winrate, but with the increase of Forest’s popularity, it may begin to find some trouble trying to compete, but it’s still decent in the meantime as a class.

Seems like it won’t let go of the 2nd place popularity wise, and it still shows solid results, with a 53.9%(52.6%/55.3%) and with it’s list pretty much already cemented in stone, with really only having the variation of what 2 drops besides DoV and if it includes leggo Vania or not. It still continues to have good matchups against everything except Mid Shadow with 48.5%(44.5%/53.3%), Roach with 40.3%(40.8%/39.8%) and Dirt with 45.3%(40.8%/48.5%)

HAVENCRAFT

Having a super fluxing popularity, Haven now finds itself at 5th place with a 10% use rate and a 49.3% winrate.

6th most popular deck in the format, and despite GameWith (rightfully) calling it a tier 4 deck, Shadowlog documents it as having a 54.4%(61%/47.7%) winrate, which may or may not mean that someone is inflating it’s winrate, but really who knows, but this theory is may or may not be backed up by the fact that most of it’s matchups are positive, which could be up to something.

Finally shows it’s face again in the meta report, 7th most popular deck in the format with a 53.1%(59.1%/47.1%) winrate, Aggro Dragon continues to be the premiere aggro deck, and it’s tier 2 according to GameWith, beating combo decks and Mid Shadow going 1st, yet losing to most midrange decks.

SWORDCRAFT

Swordcraft shows itself again in the bottom of the use rate despite being not that bad, which is probably caused by it’s one dimensional “curve or die” playstyle, it has the same userate as Dragon, 8.3%, and having a 47.5% winrate.

7th most popular deck in the meta with a respectable 53.5%(50.6/56.6%) win rate, Mid Sword is holding it’s ground pretty nicely nowadays since it has some pretty decent matchups against both Mid Shadow with a 52.8%(53.6%/52%) and OTK Roach, with less than 50 records though but winning by sheer ward quantity.

So yeah, pretty interesting data this time, so yeah, let’s continue reviewing the mini-expansion spoilers. By the way the plan from now on is to submit these in a bi-weekly format, so don’t expect much next week, but I’ll see you at the end of the month with observations on the mini-expansion, see you next time!

Hello everyone, I’m Cleric, I’ve usually written the Shadowverse’s Meta Reports for the Unlimited format in r/Shadowverse for more than a month now, but I’ve been given the chance to write them for Team Rankstar from now on! I hope I can be useful to you and help you get a better understanding on the meta trends in the format. This is my first time writing here, so here’s the deal: I take Shadowlog’s meta trend data, I review it, and discriminate it so I only take note of the decks that have 300 or more records, then add some comments, also if I manage to get a hold of them I add some decklists from time to time. I’ll write some clarifications for people new here and that are unfamiliar with these decks, also this report uses the overall winrate (going 1st/going 2nd) format, also this will be a small recap from the Report I made this weekend, but don’t worry, on the next time Shadowlog updates I’ll upload a new one, so without further adieu, let’s get started!

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SHADOWCRAFT

Another week of Shadow’s dominance with a 20.6% use rate and 54.4% winrate this time. And it continues to show itself as the top class in the format.

A midrange deck reliant on creating sticky boards with skeleton tokens and small followers with a decent amount of removal that aims to make those boards threatening and finish the game thanks to Demonlord Eachtar. Still the most popular deck with a 56.7%(56.3%/57%) winrate, and thanks to SVO we can see how strong Lady Grey is, pretty much soloing some of the matchups when played at the right time, also it seems that people are starting to embrace Fran, because 4 damage and a Last Words activator for 3pp that gives 2 shadows is preeeeeetty good. It has at the moment almost only positive winrates other than Elana and Tenko, but if you ask me the winrates seem a wee bit too high, sure the deck is pretty good, but is it that indominable? (I’m still saying that the deck struggles against Shift because of their spellboost shenanigans).

Pretty much Mid Shadow with the possibility to highroll into a turn 3 Atomy, pretty much just disregards some cards in the Mid Shadow package for Attendant of the Night and Atomy. Since it’s still Mid Shadow at it’s core it’s pretty good but it has a 58.3%(60.4%/56.4%) winrate which seems quite inflated, only really losing to regular Mid Shadow (because of Lurching Corpse).

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RUNECRAFT

20.3% of the meta with a 48% winrate, Rune continues to be the 2nd most popular class in the format thanks to it being somewhat decent at fighting against Vengeance Blood and Midrange Shadow.

Everyone favorite’s combo deck with a heavy control feel, aims to use Runecraft’s spellboost mechanic to activate Dimension Shift, which give an extra turn upon use, the deck. Took a bit of a hit in popularity since it’s now the 4th most popular deck, and with a 45.4%(48.8%/41.8%) winrate it continues to theorically struggle against most of the meta yet it still bullies Haven into oblivion.

A Rune deck that uses the other class mechanic: Earth Rite. The more popular and effective variation uses the Earth Sigils for Burn effects, making the deck a very aggressive one while still maintaining a midrange feel. Still the 5th most popular deck and now it’s actually sporting a pretty good 54.3%(54%/54.7%) winrate, it’s now the premiere Rune deck for climbing since it’s mainly used to target Vengeance Blood since, y’know, they’re doing your job for you, and it now has a bit more than a 60% winrate against DShift, yet it struggles against Roach, since it’s winrate hovers around the 40% against it.

The other main Spellboost deck, unlike DShift this deck doesn’t spellboost to create OTK scenarios, but to boost Daria, Dimensional Witch to create big, and honestly really unfair, boards in a single turn, making it a tempo deck. Confusing people to this day making them think it’s actually DShift until Daria drops down, Daria is now the 10th most popular deck and has a 47.2%(40%/54.5%) winrate, it can go even against most matchups if it highrolls, and when it does it usually wins on the spot, but it’s especially potent against Vengeance, yet it loses to DShift consistently.

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BLOODCRAFT

Continues to be the 3rd most popular craft with a 15.3% use rate, yet it’s winrate is suffering a little bit with a 51.7%, but it’s not nearly enough to take it out of the game, since the class continues to be competent enough to ladder with.

Another big contender in the game, with a 52.6%(52.9%/52.4%) winrate, Vengeance is a really aggressive Midrange/Tempo deck that aims to put itself into Vengeance on turn 4 to exploits it’s cards that rely on that mechanic. It still shows itself as a desirable laddering deck since it can win fast if it draws well and it’s competently piloted, yet SVO showed that it is a bit of a crux in the competitive scene because it can also brick pretty hard in the most unfortunate moments, so use it in tournaments with a bit of caution. Still rolling over DShift and Ramp Dragon, yet losing against Roach, Dirt and…now to Tenko with a 36.8%(39.3%/34.5%) winrate? Huh.

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FORESTCRAFT

Still at 4th place, having a 14.5% use rate and a 54.5% win rate. Forest continues to show results with it’s combo gameplan and shows that it’s not planning to stop anytime soon.

3rd most popular deck with a 57.2%(60.5%/54%) win rate (wee bit inflated much?) Roach is the other most popular combo deck, aiming to collect 1pp tokens, 0 costed Fairy Wisps and bounce cards to enable OTK combos thanks to Rhinoceroach. This week it seems to mostly sport positive winrates (and the fact that they are almost all +60% makes me really weary of them being inflated) except against Mid Shadow, which has a 40.1%(40%/40.2%) winrate.

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SWORDCRAFT

Rising from the very bottom, Sword has seen a bit of an increase in use rate, now at 9.5%, yet it suffered a bit of a dip in it’s winrate, which is currently at 46.2%. Seems like Sword is doing a bit rough these days. For the 3rd (4th? I legit stopped counting) time in a row, Aggro Sword didn’t make it into the +300 records, seems like aggro is really not desirable at the moment (though yeah, it has a positive winrate going 1st and curving out so there’s that).

The other main midrange deck and one of the top ones in the Rotation ladder, it tries to flood the board and outvalue the opponent thanks to it’s token generators on board, Ward followers, and making use of Arthur, King Knight for that effect, using Sky Fortress and Albert Levin Saber to finish off the opponent. Trying to stay relevant at the 8th place, and sometimes it succeeds but seems like it stumbles somewhat, not helping that since not many people are playing it, Mid Sword doesn’t have that many records to actually show it’s matchups at the moment, but in the very least it goes even against Mid Shadow according to Shadowlog.

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DRAGONCRAFT

Continues to be a fluctutating class in terms of popularity, it’s 6th place now, with an userate of 8.8% (which is curiously the same as Haven’s) and a 44.2% winrate, curiously enough Aggro Dragon didn’t make the cut for the 300 necessary records (but just veeeeery slightly since it’s at 299, it has a positive winrate if you’re interested) with only Ramp dragon showing itself in the desired range this time.

Ramp Dragon

Still an amalgamation of different Dragon decks that use Ramp cards (except decks that use Phoenix Roost, since those are being counted as a different deck already) such as Dragon Oracle and Sybil of the Waterwyrm to cheat out big followers in the earlier turns. Not much to say here, 7th most popular deck yet it has a sub 40% winrate, it gets countered by the current top meta decks and then some (with the exception of Burn Rune because of Ramp’s healing), moving on.

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HAVENCRAFT

The obvious finally happened, Haven is now at the bottom of the use rates…almost. It has an 8.8% use rate like Dragon yet it fairs a little bit better with a 45.7% win rate.

Tenko Haven

A deck that relies completely on Tenko’s Shrine, an amulet that deals damage to the board and to the face every time you are healed, It’s filled to the brink with healing cards and aims to outgrind the opoonent. Curiously enough Shadowlog documents Tenko as the 6th most popular deck with a 51.5%(56%/48%) winrate, despite it realistically showing up on ladder not that frequently, beating Mid Shadow 59.6%(53.8%/65.4%) and…Vengeance 63.2%(65.5%/60.7%)? Now I’m actually curious what changes were made to the deck.

Because every Haven deck wants to heal nonstop nowadays, Elana also relies on healing, but this time it uses Elana’s Prayer to buff it’s boards. 9th most popular deck with a 47.2%(45.3%/49.2%), we all know how Elana has the ability to highroll it’s followers’ buffs into making them nigh-unremovable. According to Shadowlog it’s best matchup that has more than 50 records is Mid Shadow with a 50.9%(51.7%/50%) winrate.

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PORTALCRAFT

Insert snide remark about a 2% use rate and 42.4% winrate class

No but really, despite it’s dominance in the Rotation ladder and for people unfamiliar with the Unlimited format, Portal has never been competitively viable here because it has yet to be able to create a fast enough deck for the format, since it’s fastest win condition (Orchis) is 1 turn too slow, and it’s cards lack a little bit more punch to them, in my opinion it lacks both that and at least another 1 drop to be able to properly compete, but we’ll see.

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So not a lot has changed in the format from last week it seems, like most of the time, well, we’ll probably have to wait until the mini-expansion gets released to see if it makes any impact in this format and if any card gets nerfed/restricted in that patch, so, see you next time.